Warning: the comments below contain spoilers.
If you didn’t get enough male bonding and legacy hero worship in JSA 62, not to worry. Writer Geoff Johns is flogging the same themes here.
A brutal assault from Gorilla Grodd and some stroking from Nightwing convince the Flash that a museum in his honor and public adoration are good things. Hero-worship inspires people, you see, and it also gives the Flash a nice little buzz when he’s out of costume, eavesdropping on citizens as they praise him. It’s another step in settling Wally West into the Barry Allen status quo of hometown hero with secret identity intact.
I have to wonder about the selection of Grodd for this particular arc. Trashing the Flash Museum seems somewhat beneath him. I’ve always thought of Grodd as move of a strategist and long-term thinker, and there doesn’t seem to be any useful end in this for him. It’s a temper tantrum, and lots of knuckle-draggers are out there to fill the same function.
Since this is a Geoff Johns comic, we get one of his standard story endings. It’s flavor type two, “ironic twist,” as opposed to type one, “life-threatening cliffhanger.” Just after Wally fully embraces the benefits of secrecy, it turns around to bite him. Oops!
